CHAPTER 5
Jaisalmer a Mughal Fief.
Rāwal Sabal Singh, A.D. 1651-61.
Pokaran lost to Jaisalmer.
Rāwal Amār Singh, A.D. 1661-1702.
Provoked by the daily encroachments of the Kandhalot Rathors, Sundardas and Dalpat, chiefs of Bikampur, determined to retaliate: “let us get a name in the [263] world,” said Dalpat, “and attack the lands of the Rathors.” Accordingly, they invaded, plundered, and fired the town of Jaju, on the Bikaner frontier. The Kandhalots retaliated on the towns of Jaisalmer, and an action took place, in which the Bhattis were victorious, slaying two hundred of the Rathors. The Rawal partook in the triumph of his vassals. Raja Anup Singh[[6]] of Bikaner was then serving with the imperial armies in the Deccan. On receiving this account, he commanded his minister to issue a summons to every Kandhalot capable of carrying arms to invade Jaisalmer, and take and raze Bikampur, or he would consider them traitors. The minister issued the summons; every Rathor obeyed it, and he added, as an auxiliary, a Pathan chief with his band from Hissar. Rawal Amra collected his Bhattis around him, and instead of awaiting the attack, advanced to meet it; he slew many of the chiefs, burnt the frontier towns, and recovered Pugal, forcing the Rathor chiefs of Barmer and Kotra to renew their engagements of fealty and service.
Amra had eight sons, and was succeeded by Jaswant, the eldest, in S. 1758 (A.D. 1702), whose daughter was married to the heir-apparent of Mewar.
Here ends the chronicle, of which the foregoing is an abstract: the concluding portion of the annals is from a MS. furnished by a living chronicler, corrected by other information. It is but a sad record of anarchy and crime.
Soon after the death of Rawal Amra, Pugal, Barmer, Phalodi, and various other towns and territories in Jaisalmer, were wrested from this State by the Rathors.[[7]]
The territory bordering the Gara was taken by Daud Khan, an Afghan chieftain from Shikarpur, and it became the nucleus of a State called after himself, Daudputra.[[8]]
Rāwal Jaswant Singh, A.D. 1702-22.
Rāwal Akhai Singh, A.D. 1722-62.
Sawai Singh, an infant of three years of age. Akhai Singh collected the Bhattis from all quarters, stormed the castle, put the infant to death, and regained his rights.
Akhai Singh ruled forty years. During this reign, Bahawal Khan, son of Daud Khan, took Derawar, and all the tract of Khadal, the first Bhatti conquest, and added it to his new State of Bahawalpur, or Daudputra.
Rāwal Mūlrāj, A.D. 1762-1820. Conspiracy against Mūlrāj.
The banished prince remained two years and a half with Raja Bijai Singh, who treated him like a son. But he carried his arrogant demeanour with him to Jodhpur; for one day, as he was going out to hunt, a Bania, to whom he was indebted, seized his horse by the bridle, and invoking the an of Bijai Singh, demanded payment of his debt. The prince, in turn, required him, with the invocation “by Mulraj!” to unloose his hold. But the man of wealth, disregarding the appeal, insolently replied, “What is Mulraj to me?” It was the last word he spoke; the sword of Rae Singh was unsheathed, and the Bania’s head rolled on the ground: then, turning his horse’s [266] head to Jaisalmer, he exclaimed, “Better be a slave at once than live on the bounty of another.” His unexpected arrival outside his native city brought out the entire population to see him. His father, the Rawal, sent to know what had occasioned his presence, and he replied that it was merely preparatory to pilgrimage. He was refused admittance; his followers were disarmed, and he was sent to reside at the fortress of Dewa, together with his sons Abhai Singh and Dhonkal Singh, and their families.
Sālim Singh, Prime Minister.
Death of Rāe Singh.
The princes, Abhai Singh and Dhonkal Singh, confined in the fortress of Ramgarh, soon after the murder of Ketsi were carried off, together with their wives and infants, by poison. The murderer then proclaimed Gaj Singh, the youngest but one of all the posterity of Mulraj, as heir-apparent. His brothers sought security in flight from this fiend-like spirit of the minister, and are now refugees in the Bikaner territory. The following slip from the genealogical tree will show the branches so unmercifully lopped off by this monster:
[269.]
Maha Singh, being blind of one eye[[13]] (kana), could not succeed; and Man Singh being killed by a fall from his horse, the Mehta was saved the crime of adding one more “mortal murther to his crown.”
Long Reigns of Rājput Princes.
Could the same prophetic steel which carved upon the pillar of Brahmsar the destinies of the grandson of the deified Hari, eleven hundred years before Christ, have subjoined to that of Jaisal the fate which awaited his descendant Mulraj, he would doubtless have regarded the prophecy as conveying a falsehood too gross for belief. That the offspring of the deified prince of Dwarka, who founded Ghazni, and fought the [270] united kings of Syria and Bactria, should, at length, be driven back on India, and compelled to seek shelter under the sign of the cross, reared amidst their sand-hills by a handful of strangers, whose ancestors, when they were even in the maturity of their fame, were wandering in their native woods, with painted bodies, and offering human sacrifices to the sun-god—more resembling Balsiva than Balkrishna—these would have seemed prodigies too wild for faith.
[1]. Nunkaran had three sons, Harraj, Maldeo, and Kalyandas; each had issue. Harraj had Bhim (who succeeded his grandfather Nunkaran). Maldeo had Ketsi, who had Dayaldas, father of Sabal Singh, to whom was given in appanage the town of Mandila, near Pokaran. The third son, Kalyandas, had Manohardas, who succeeded Bhim. Ramchand was the son of Manohardas. A slip from the genealogical tree will set this in a clear light.
[2]. [About 75 miles N.W. of Jodhpur city.]
[3]. Another synchronism (see Annals of Marwar for an account of Nahar Khan) of some value, since it accounts for the first abstraction of territory by the Rathors from the Bhattis.
[4]. The Gara is invariably called the Bias in the chronicle. Gara, or Ghara, is so called, in all probability, from the mud (gar) suspended in its waters. The Gara is composed of the waters of the Bias and Sutlej. [See IGI, vii. 139, xxiii. 179.]
[5]. [About 60 miles S. of Jaisalmer city.]
[6]. [A.D. 1669-95.]
[7]. The most essential use to which my labours can be applied is that of enabling the British Government, when called upon to exercise its functions, as protector and arbitrator of the international quarrels of Rajputana, to understand the legitimate and original grounds of dispute. Here we perceive the germ of the border-feuds, which have led to so much bloodshed between Bikaner and Jaisalmer, in which the former was the first aggressor; but as the latter, for the purpose of redeeming her lost territory, most frequently appeals as the agitator of public tranquillity, it is necessary to look for the remote cause in pronouncing our award.
[8]. [Bahāwalpur.]
[9]. [Lāsa, ‘anything clammy,’ like mud. This is a common pious act, performed at sacred tanks, and by some castes, like the Idaiyans of Madras, at marriages (North Indian Notes and Queries, ii. 111; Thurston, Tribes and Castes of S. India, i. 360 f.).]
[10]. [This tribe has not been traced.]
[11]. Saropa is the Rajput term for khilat, and is used by those who, like the Rana of Udaipur, prefer the vernacular dialect to the corrupt jargon of the Islamite. Sar-o-pa (from ‘head,’ sar, to ‘foot,’ pa) means a complete dress; in short, cap-à-pied. [See Yule, Hobson-Jobson, 2nd ed. 808.]
[12]. Pluto’s realm.
[13]. A person blind of one eye is incompetent to succeed, according to Hindu law. Kana is the nickname given to a person labouring under this personal defect, which term is merely an anagram of ânka, ‘the eye.’ [This is wrong. It is derived from Skt. kāna, ‘one-eyed’.] The loss of an eye does not deprive an occupant of his rights—of which we had a curious example in the siege of the imperial city of Delhi, which gave rise to the remark, that the three greatest men therein had only the complement of one man amongst them: the emperor had been deprived of both eyes by the brutality of Ghulam Kadir; the besieging chief Holkar was kana, as was the defender, Sir D. Ochterlony. Holkar’s name has become synonymous with kana, and many a horse, dog, and man, blind of an eye, is called after this celebrated Mahratta leader. The Hindus, by what induction I know not, attach a degree of moral obliquity to every individual kana, and appear to make no distinction between the natural and the acquired defect; though to all kanas they apply another and more dignified appellation, Sukracharya [the regent of the planet Venus], the Jupiter of their astromythology, which very grave personage came by his misfortune in no creditable way—for, although the Guru, or spiritual head of the Hindu gods, he set as bad a moral example to them as did the classical Jupiter to the tenants of the Greek and Roman Pantheon.
[14]. [Ummed Singh of Kotah, A.D. 1771-1819; Mūlrāj of Jaisalmer, 1762-1820; Akhai Singh of Jaisalmer, 1722-62.]
[15]. Mansura was many miles south of Bakhar.